Capt. James Buffett regales a life at sea long before grandson Jimmy Buffett (Yesterday's News)

Editor's Note: This snippet of Civil War news from the Press-Register of 1861 was published in the 1911 newspapers to mark the 50th anniversary of the conflict. The 1861 newspapers no longer exist in local library archives.The remaining excerpts are from the original edition of the Press-Register.

• "INCENDIARIES. -- Saturday night the Pavilion Restaurant and ... Depot of A.W. King at the four-mile station, on the Mobile and Springhill Railroad, was fired by some iniquitous scoundrel, and totally consumed. Loss $200. In the course of the next day Mr. King got up a temporary tent, and in a few days will have an institution again under way, as spacious and commodious as that destroyed. The Evening News is for sale at this stand daily, immediately after its issue."

Sunday, July 16, 1911:

• "Determined that the city ordinances must be enforced if the city is to be freed of typhoid fever, and in view of the number of cases reported during the total number for the month of June, the board of health .... instructed the city health officer, Dr. Rhett Goode, to notify every physician in the city that every case of typhoid fever must be reported immediately."

• "Fifteen thousand people saw the moving pictures of Mobile's Bi-Centennial celebration during the 4 days that the pictures were exhibited in this city."

• "On complaint of Senator T.M. Stevens, Ed Shine, a cab driver, was arrested by the police Saturday morning, charged with having violated the city ordinance governing the rates to be charged for cab fare. Shine, according to the police, was driving a cab in which Senator Stevens rode from the Louisville and Nashville depot to his office in the City Bank bilding. The (driver) charged his fare fifty cents, changing a dollar into two halves and keeping half of it, despite the remonstrance of Senator Stevens. The fare named in the city ordinance is twenty-five cents."

• "There will be no abandonment of the original design to hold the Gulf Coast Tropical Fair this fall, it is stated by the manager of the fair association. The plans providing for the location have been somewhat disarranged by the arbitrary conditions imposed by a property owner over whose narrow strip of land it is necessary to secure a right-of-way in order to adjust transportation to the fair ground. All other rights have been obtained."

Thursday, July 16, 1936:

• "FOLEY, Ala. -- Several score fishermen from all over Alabama and other parts of the country were arriving at Foley tonight, every one bent on carrying off honors in the fifth annual Baldwin County Fishing Rodeo, scheduled Thursday and Friday.

"Registration headquarters in Foley tonight said indications were attendance would surpass all previous records, with 150 fishermen, as well as 300 to 400 spectators, expected to be at Burkhart's Landing on Bear Point, fishing headquarters, Thursday morning. ...

"Many notables are either here or expected for the rodeo, including Governor and Mrs. Bibb Graves, Lister Hill, representative in Congress, and others."

• "Federal, state and local medical authorities joined in the fight against infantile paralysis in three Southern states Wednesday with a newly-formulated nasal spray as the basis of the attack. ...

"Dr. J.N. Baker, state health officer, said that physicians in north Alabama counties were using the pieric (picric?) acid and alum spray recommended by the United States bureau of public health."

• "George Washington Herring, who makes a point of the fact he is not merely 96, but 'in my 97th year,' took off from Bates Field at 10:15 o'clock Wednesday night in an Eastern airliner for Newark

As you read this he is in or near Newark, N.J., where he will change planes and go on to Boston. There he'll be met by relatives, and have luncheon today at his home in Hingham, Mass.

"'It's the only way to travel any long distance,' the near centenarian told your correspondent."

• "The Mobile Light and Railway Company Wednesday announced the discontinuance of trolley service on the Michigan Avenue car line after midnight Wednesday."

Sunday, July 16, 1961:

• "That old charred wreckage at the east end of the Mobile Bay Causeway, visible at low tide, is the remains of the old 4-masted schooner Chiquimula, that was destroyed by fire of undetermined origin on March 3, 1953.

"We were asked about the wreckage last week and remembered that we once interviewed the former skipper of that old windjammer. He is Capt. James Buffett, who now lives at Pascagoula, Miss. The captain's son, J.D. Buffett Jr., lives at Spring Hill. ... We interviewed the captain on March 3, 1949. ...

"There are many interesting stories about the Chiquimula. Capt. Buffett told us of a voyage in 1925 when he weathered a hurricane between Cuba and the Canary Islands and of another time when he had his wife and two children aboard and was becalmed and ran out of food. ... The voyage when the food ran out, Capt. Buffett told us in 1949, was from the British West Indies to New York. Aboard besides the crew were his wife and 2 children, 'Jimmy' who now lives in Mobile, was seven at the time, and the other child was Patsy, then 4 years old. ...

"If you ask anyone about the Chiquimula, they will no doubt tell you a lot of tales about smuggling and rum-running. Don't believe them.

"Capt. Buffett said such stories couldn't be true. The Chiquimula was too slow and too big for such service." -- ED LEE, Press-Register Reporter."